From WisPolitics.com/WisBusiness.com …
— A UW-Madison study found strategies for “deimplementing” opioids in primary care settings led to lower levels of these drugs being prescribed.
The university in a release today put a spotlight on the study’s findings, which focus on an approach for prescribing opioids that involves educating clinicians and patient monitoring. Researchers found doctors at clinics using these strategies used lower opioid dosing levels.
Andrew Quanbeck, an associate professor of family medicine and community health at the UW School of Medicine and Public Health, led the research effort. He notes that health systems have responded to the opioid epidemic with prescribing policies “to support safer opioid prescribing,” but adds “policies don’t implement themselves.”
“We need robust and effective implementation strategies to promote practice change,” he said in a statement.
The researchers studied different approaches to training clinicians on chronic pain management for nearly 9,000 patients in 56 clinics, according to the study.
By combining CDC opioid prescribing guidelines with the “deimplementing” strategies, they found clinics that followed this approach had a 6% decline in daily opioid use among patients. Study authors say this is a “modest” but statistically significant difference.
Quanbeck says the CDC’s 2022 guidelines, which call for a low opioid dose to start and a slow approach to new prescriptions, “seems to be the most solid recommendation” based on the study’s findings.
Study authors wrote that “clinic- and prescriber-level deimplementation strategies may help health systems take positive steps toward reducing reliance on opioid medications for chronic pain management in primary care settings.”
See more in the release below.
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